My tale of woe continues...
Thanks to all for the suggestions about how to handle
the scsi drives.
I did the following:
I used the scsi bios to re-format the seagate scsi hard
drive, and cleared the motherboard cmos by jumpering
it. I've stripped the machine down to memory, video card,
scsi card, seagate hard drive, external IBM scsi cd-rom,
floppy, keyboard, and mouse.
This put the machine in as close to it's state when I performed
the original install.
I then attempted the w2k install off of a bootable w2k cd-rom.
I tried the install both skipping and using the option to load
drivers for the adaptec scsi card. These attempts failed.
I then went into the scsi bios, and changed the boot device
to scsi ID 1, the IBM cd-rom. (ID 0 is the seagate drive, and
ID 7 is the adapter.) I also went into the motherboard bios,
and changed the fist boot device to be "scsi".
I then tried installing again, both with and without specifically
loading the adaptec drivers.
In all cases the failure is the same: Windows 2000 Setup
runs and loads a bunch of files. It gives the message
"Setup is loading files (CD-ROM File System)...", and then
switches to the message
"Setup is starting Windows 2000".
After displaying that message for a little while (about half
a minute, the scree flashes, and brings up the
STOP 0x0000007B; Inaccessible boot device message.
In addition to the install attempts I detailed above, I've tried
many other combination --- a dozen or more. I've tried
installing off of the Plextor scsi cd-rom. I've tried installing off
of a non-bootable w2k/sp1 cd-rom, making the install
floppies. I've booted into the running, but flaky original
install, and started the install process off of the cd-rom.
I've played around with a variety of bios setting, and so on.
This is a real conundrum. All of the hardware appears to
be working fine. The install process runs smoothly up until
the Inaccessible boot device error. I've installed a copy of
"Gentus Linux" that was shipped with the motherboard
three times now (off of both the IBM and Plextor cd-roms).
The Linux installs went without a hitch, and I was able to
boot in to Linux. (The Linux install worked whether or not
I played around with the boot-orders settings in the bios.)
(P.S., on Linux, I tried both the "Gnome Workstation" and
"KDE Workstation" install options. Linux boots up to the
command line. Does anyone know how to start the
graphical shell from the command line? Thanks.)
By stripping down the machine, wiping the drive, and clearing
the cmos, I've reset the machine to very nearly it's original
state. The original install went very smoothly --- none of
this problem. I don't recall whether I specifically installed
drivers for the adaptec card, but I just followed the directions,
and everything worked, and I booted into the fresh w2k
install. (The basic install was fine --- the only tweaking
I had to do was some to get the 3d graphics card to run
stably.)
I can't figure out what could be different this time.
Well, I'm fresh out of ideas, and would appreciate any and
all suggestions. This is turning out to be much harder than
I expected!
Thanks in advance.
Ultra <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Frank R. Brown" <[log in to unmask]>
>
> > > So, given that my cd-roms are scsi, how do I follow your
> > suggestion to boot from cd-rom first? Does "boot from
> > cd-rom" really mean "boot from ide cd-rom"?
>
> Correct, in your case, forget it.
>
> >
> > I like your idea about wiping the hard drive. The *only*
> > thing I can think of that is different from when we first
> > installed w2k is that during the original install, the
> > hard drive wasn't bootable (it was completely new).
> > So maybe having the bootable cd-rom, and the bootable
> > hard-drive both on scsi is confusing the w2k install.
> >
> > I've never wiped a scsi drive from the scsi bios. Could
> > you give me a brief description of what to expect, and
> > what I'll need to do
>
> In SCSI BIOS, you should have option (under utility) to format a SCSI HDD,
> unlike IDE drive, which requires special programs to perform so called "low
> level format", all SCSI drives can be "low level" formatted in SCSI BIOS.
> this format should get rid of everything on drives, and bring the drive to
> total empty (no partition, no nothing). Just browser in your SCSI BIOS, you
> have nothing to lose. And, you should be able to set boot device there too.
>
> Good Luck
>
> Jun Qian
Frank R.Brown
Frank.R.Brown@MailAndNews
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